How to lose your keys, a guide for both sexes.

1. Establishing an Item is Lost

Women: An item will officially be considered lost when it has been searched for extensively, movement between at least two rooms is required.

Men: An item will be considered lost when it cannot be spotted from the bit of the sofa you are sitting on.

2. Search Procedure – Level 1

Women are required to search all rooms of the house, the car and the bottom of the washing basket. At least 3 drawers and cupboards must be opened.

Men are expected to pat down the pockets of the clothes they are wearing. These clothes need not correspond with the clothes worn when the item was lost. No standing is required at this point. On no account should any drawers or cupboards be opened.

3. Calling for Assistance

Before assistance can be called upon the female loser must have retraced steps going back until the last known sighting of the lost item. Assistance may come in the form of motivational comments comments from the sofa. For example ‘I told you to stop rearranging stuff.’

A male loser should call for assistance from the comfort of the sofa. Support should ideally be provided in the form of a woman looking for the item while you mentally retrace your steps/ watch another episode of Extreme Fishing with Robson Green.

4. Search Procedure – Level 2

If an item continues to remain lost after a Level 1 search procedures may be escalated.

A female Level 2 search may include, but is not limited to, doing all the laundry in the washing basket, emptying coat pockets whilst sorting out a couple of bags for the charity shop and tidying up that kitchen drawer full of takeaway menus and broken shit.

Men will need to prepare for the very real possibility that they may have to leave the sofa. Wait to see if Robson lands the sturgeon first though.

5. Panic

This is a crucial stage for any loser and it generally precedes the eventual finding of any lost item.

Rest assured that the moment you enter Timpsons to get a new set of keys cut or phone the bank to cancel your cards the lost item will miraculously appear.

Unless of course the item is really, really lost. No I mean like really lost. I can’t find it anywhere. Oh did I leave it at yours? Why didn’t you tell me? Oh you called and left a message? Yeah. No he didn’t say. He’s busy, Robson Green is grappling with a catfish.

I lose things all the time. Just today I’ve lost my phone twice and my car keys. I used to look for things properly, but now I’m guilty of man looking. My mother in law always says that when we all married into the family we inherited the ‘perry art of looking’….maybe she was on to something…

omg my husband to a tee, seriously he can walk into a room with said lost item in room clearly on a table and he wont see it, claiming it is not there until i go in pick it up and put it in his hand grrrrr. also point number 1-5 perfect for the woman

How worrying that this post reminds me of an episode of Peppa Pig where Daddy Pig has lost his glasses, the whole house is searched, and he is eventually found to be sitting on them. Am embarrassed that this is how my mind is working, but there it is.

Sometimes, I like to sit and watch the man folk in the house search desperately for something in the same drawer for like, 20 minutes even though I know exactly where the lost item is. Is that mean of me?

Proper laughed my head off at this! Brilliant. Although my daughter is definitely a man when it comes to looking for things, and the phrase “For heaven’s sake it’s here! It’s right here! Here! See it?! It’s right here!” is often shrieked by me..
Can I just say kudos to that husband-fellow’s beard though! That must make it easier, eh?!

Don’t get me started on this, oh wait, you have. Spot on. Tidying up drawers of ‘broken shit’ is par for the course for Level 2 search procedure, however in this house I do get help with that, usually along the lines of “don’t chuck that broken piece of crap I’ve been saving for years….” or “do you have to do that now, I am trying to relax”.

When my partner and his family were painting our flat (total of 4 men) they were all looking for the pole thingy to paint the ceiling, I walked into the kitchen and just went “what this?” Needless to say, yes it was indeed that.